Why Ohio Will Decide the Presidential Election

As Obama's margins in swing states shrink to a hairbreadth or vanish altogether, Ohio has emerged as the President's firewall, its 18 electoral votes his best hope of stopping the surging Romney campaign from winning the White House.

“There are a lot of combinations to winning the five Ohios. We’re going to unlock the combination,” promises Rich Beeson, the Romney campaign’s political director. Four years after John McCain was outhustled across the state, the Romney campaign boasts that it has knocked on more doors here than anywhere else. Inside the Romney campaign’s Ohio headquarters, a nondescript warren of rooms on the north side of Columbus, aides have mapped out a plan to cobble together a majority by targeting voters in places where Obama’s support has slipped: coal country, college campuses, Catholic communities, cities that rely on the military bases that would suffer from looming defense cuts. “It’s all peaking at the right time for us,” says Scott Jennings, Romney’s Ohio director, who calls the race a “dead heat.” Averages of all public polls in the state suggest the race could be within a couple of points.

But Romney’s team is still scrambling to catch up with the Obama campaign, which never really stopped organizing after winning by four points in 2008. (One Obama field office in crucial Cuyahoga County never closed.) David Axelrod, the President’s top strategist, says the private numbers held by both campaigns show that the race across the swing states is not as tight as the Romney team is claiming. “We know what we know, and they know what they know,” Axelrod says. “We’ll know who is bluffing in two weeks.”

Republicans have sought to counter the Democratic advantage on the ground with a stepped-up early-voting campaign of their own. For the first time, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State mailed absentee-ballot applications to every registered voter, a tactic that could shave Obama’s edge, given the traditional GOP propensity to vote by mail. There is good reason to think, meanwhile, that Romney’s momentum elsewhere in recent days may improve his standing in Ohio as last-minute voters, who traditionally break for the challenger, make up their minds. “There is an old saying: ‘The good gets better, and the bad gets worse,'” says Beeson. “Our good has gotten better, and their bad has gotten worse.”

Then there were the billboards, paid for by anonymous outside donors, that loomed for several weeks above mostly low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland and Columbus, warning that voting fraud was a felony punishable by 3 years in jail and stiff fines.

In the final fortnight, groups of all sorts are camping out in the state, hoping to turn a few thousand votes here and there. Social conservatives have renewed their efforts to spike turnout in rural Ohio and turn churches into early-voting information centers. Phil Burress, the leader of pro-life, anti-gay-marriage group Citizens for Community Values, has been crisscrossing the state in a van to educate church pastors about what they can say from the pulpit about the upcoming election. His group plans to take out full-page ads in 100 of the state’s rural newspapers in the hopes of boosting Republican turnout. “The message is, Rural Ohio rules Ohio,” Burress says. “If rural Ohio shows up, they win every time.”

The state’s formidable union activists, meanwhile, believe they retain an advantage after overturning a 2011 law that curbed collective-bargaining rights for public employees, a measure Romney supported at the time. Their efforts echo Obama’s habit of saying Romney “isn’t one of us.” Says Tim Burga, the Ohio head of the AFL-CIO, of voters: “Mitt Romney doesn’t share their values. They can’t trust him when he talks about the plight of the economy. He has an investor-class mentality.” As former Democratic governor Ted Strickland puts it, “It’s a long way from Steubenville, Ohio, to Geneva, Switzerland.”

With all this politicking going on and the whole world watching, turnout is expected to set records. Bennett, the GOP chairman, estimates that turnout could edge toward 6 million, far more than the 2008 totals, with some 75% of Ohio’s 7.9 million registered voters casting a ballot.

You certainly missed the message. There was no criticism of President Obama in my statement. As a matter of fact, if you check the postings for the past month or longer, you would see that I have been one of the most fervent supporters of the President.

I have a series of blog posts on my Independent Investigations blog that deal with reasons why I and many others can not vote for Republican candidates and specifically Mitt Romney. Reason #7 involves the fact that we just can not trust him because every word out of his mouth seems to be the opposite of prior words out of his mouth. Feel free to visit the blog and click on the "follow" button to receive new posts as they appear. Opposing views always welcome.

Ohio will "decide the election" because our political system was created over 200 years ago, and it's completely outdated and ineffective. I say, if we don't change it before the next election for Hillary Clinton, that we all move to Ohio and make it a real election...for the first time in 200 years. For America to go around the world demanding Democracy when we don't have it here at home is an international joke.

+HOT DEAL+DUTIES LOCAL OFFICIALS TO RELAY/ENFORCE MANDATE & DECLARATIONS OF AUTHORITIES*+PROGRAMS OF AUTHORITIES DUE TO VARIOUS UNSETTLED,INCOMPLETE MULTI CULTURAL ISSUES*+local officials are not authorized to FORCE MEMBERS TO SHOULDER OTHER MISTAKES CRIMES!

We will go backwards with the Romney/Ryan ticket....supporters of Romney/Ryan say don't blame Bush but think about it people, IF Romney/Ryan are elected? The same Bush/Cheney folks. This week Cheney will be attending a Romney/Ryan fundraiser and next week Bush will be attending another fundraiser for them. Do you really think Bush policies aren't coming back??? Romney doesn't have a backbone to stand up to his party or anyone else. He can't stand up to Akin (Mr. Legitimate Rape), Murdock (Mr. Rape is God's will and the ONLY senate candidate he endorsed to do an ad for).

C'mon people, there is more than 2 names in the Romney/Ryan ticket...it's the whole Bush folks. Romney is just a puppet to execute their plan. If you don't believe me then why can't Romney speak up when wrong is wrong instead of ignoring it hoping it will disappear. Heck, Ryan has more balls than Mitt Romney.

The democrat war on poverty is going great, poverty was @14% 50 years ago when it started, still @14% today. Hasn't helped anyone get out of poverty, even though 1 trillion dollars we spent on welfare last year, divided evenly among welfare recipients, would have taken every single one of them out of poverty. Then again, the war on poverty wasn't every really about getting people out of poverty, it was about getting the poor to vote for liberals, hence the results. Problem is that we have less than 10 years left where we can carry the entitlement levels we have now and it will all come crashing down. Politicians keep talking about putting the burden of this debt on future generations, in reality it is just around the corner. Will be interesting to see how priorities change when the country falls unto economic collapse. For calendar year 2013 the Congressional Budget Office predicts the follwing: Unemployment will exceed 9%, real GDP will drop an additional .5% (from the already catastrophic 1.3% today) and we will be back in recession. 4 more years of Obama are not going to be 4 more of the same, things are going to get worse.

Religious Republican zombies are coming out of the woodwork -- descending on America! Scary or what?Romney; would be the equivalent to the Taliban -- in his treatment of women’s rights and the gay community -- with his extreme cultist attitude … if ever elected!Religion; is the biggest bully on the block!IRS codes prohibit churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates!The IRS … should immediately tax churches -- that break that rule!Churches -- are opposing gay rights -- based on a cult! Tax them or shut them down!Roman Catholic; Baptist & Mormon churches who were involved in Proposition 8; against the gay community – should be shut down immediately and/or have their tax exemption status revoked!Church manses; mansions; corporate jets and Christian college campuses … should face taxes or be shut down -- based on corruption and/or being involved in cultism!Mormons are nothing more than homophobic bigots and lustful religious lunatics; who harvested women … attempting to scrutinize themselves; into eternity – without success!Obama should be praised for standing up for human rights … by supporting the gay community! To see the religious lunatics try to manipulate government and our lives – isshameful.Romney as President; would mean the darkest & meanest period in the United States of America’s history. Homophobic -- witchcraft would rule the government from Rome & Salt Lake City …!

President Obama inherited the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the War on Terror. He was elected following Bush's First Recession, and in the middle of Bush's Great Recession, the Collapse of the Housing, Financial, and Banking Industry that plunged the world into the Great World Recession. He faced rising unemployment and underemployment, as well as lower wages and record poverty. He went to work before he was inaugurated and job loss started going down right away. He pulled us out of recession, brought the GDP back up over 11% from a negative 9.5%, and cut underemployment over 2%, from over 10%. He put safeguards in place to prevent any more collapses and there were no fiscal disasters or economic crisis during his term. We have had economic improvement every month the President was in office from day one. Republicans are lying and twisting the stats to blame Bush's disasters on president Obama to avoid the stigma of Bush's failed economic policies that Romney has adopted.

Keep in mind that Ohio's SOS Husted was pretty much forced to mail out absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Ohio. He originally proposed that zero absentee-ballot applications be sent to the counties because he wanted "uniformity". Cuyahoga County Executive Fitzgerald went ahead anyway because a good chunk of Cuyahoga County's population relies on absentee ballots. Husted was pissed, but then both Husted and Fitzgerald made an agreement where absentee-ballot apps would be sent to all 88 counties in Ohio. This was not Husted's original idea.

Hey Time, could you guys please have a MMR every single day - no need to waste your time adding to many things that we must read. It seems to be a great way of composting most of the rightwing nuttery into one thread.

Without it every single post now gets invaded by the same carpet bombing of unrelated subjects that happen to confuse righties - you know like squirrels running around.

I mean I don't care and my scroll button gets a lot of practice but there might be people who look at the link and hope for argument for or against the actual subjects.

@ArmandWinter YOU are so wrong ! He paid regular taxes for his earned money, then his Trust invested that money and on that Romney pays low taxes because it is THE SECOND BITE OF THE APPLE that the GOV.

@DeeDee You are absolutely correct. The EC is antiquated and the voting system needs to be updated to reflect the times. Otherwise, one state is going to continue to dictate the presidential election outcomes, meaning that 20 people are going to decide for 300+ million, which is not a Republic or Democratic form of government.

You make a very good point. If you really relate people to who they associte with then I suggest that you watch Obama 2016.

I am not trying to change your vote Just watch it. I watched it with my girl friend and she is still voting for obama even though she found it disturbing. Ohio can watch it free for the next two weeks on payperveiw.

Hello Mister Ignorant...please don't forget that the Democrats have a 75% better record for job creation than Repubs since 1964. And we haven't destroyed two countries, put two wars on the U.S. credit card, and killed hundreds of thousands of people, including 4,000 soldiers, to get one man "in a rat hole" (quote from Ted Turner).

Not the previous election, but 2004. I have no doubt whatsoever that Kasich and his Sec of State have the "fix" in for Willard, as does the GOP Gov. in Florida.This is what the GOP is, a privileged club of white males. No one else need apply.

@cal7912 Just stop and think about what you just wrote. It does not make one ounce of sense. For not only is the EC vote determined by population, only certain states are focused on anyway by the candidates since certain states are already a bygone conclusion long before the election even takes place.

All the "wait until 2016" stuff about Obama from the people who started saying four years ago "watch how this four years turns out." It wasn't so bad, so now it's 2016. Isn't "Obama 2016" a movie or something? Too lazy to google it but it rings a bell.

Actually two thirds of the US troop deaths in Afghanistan have occurred under the Obama administration even though he has only been in office for four years compared to Bush's eight. Along with that, the Afghani soldiers that we have been training are now killing our own soldiers. Also 500,000 manufacturing jobs have left the USA since Obama was inaugurated. On top of that, he just lied to all of the American people about what happened in Benghazi. I realize that Romney is not a great pick either, but he is better than Obama.